One of my mama superpowers is that I can head-off a toddler tantrum by coming up with a baking activity with no planning. This is usually how I deploy my superpower: Dash realizes that Chris is about to leave the house and is suddenly in toddler meltdown mode. Me (with no plan whatsoever or any idea of what ingredients we have): Dash, want to bake something with mama? Dash (not convinced yet that my offer outweighs his sadness): Yeah... Me: Great! We'll make....(quickly looking in the pantry and fridge)...muffins! Dash (with a big smile and not a thought to Daddy's... Read more →

Oh, toddlers. In the span of an hour Dashiell can sweetly offer to take my empty plate to the sink when he sees that I am finished eating and also melt into a screaming tantrum. It tests our patience for sure but we try to respond consistently and respectfully. Sometimes I feel that we are doing a great job. Other times it's hard to know what the best response to a behavior is (usually after we have redirected or corrected but Dashiell is still acting out). I wanted to share some of the practices we are using with Dashiell (and... Read more →

#thebackseatboys This weekend we celebrated one year of being a one car family! I can't believe it's been a year already. I'm happy to report that being a one car family, even in the suburbs of a sprawling metro area, is going really well and we have no plans to change our situation. When we sold Chris's truck and made our 2008 Prius our only car we were determined to try our best but were open to buying another car if needed. At the time we only had one child (and one car seat) to fit in the car. One... Read more →

I've had a draft post about all the different things each of my boys is doing right now. But before I can finish it and hit "publish" they've changed and it's out of date. So I'm going to eschew capturing everything for capturing something. I hope that each volume of "what I want to remember" will be an easy way to write about the particular age of each of my boys and what it's like to be their mama. Currently Dashiell is two years and 3 months old and Cedric is six months and a half months old and this... Read more →

We are officially a television-free household! We had been thinking of making the change for a while and when we had the house painted and needed to take the television off the wall it felt like a perfect time to cut ties. We had the holes from the mount and cords patched, rearranged the furniture and honestly haven't haven't missed it (much). We were already using our television minimally so this wasn't a big sacrifice for us. A few years ago we ditched cable and have lived happily without it since then. Neither of us care to keep up with... Read more →

Day to day I sometimes forget that we are likely in the most difficult stretch of parenting that we will experience. But then we get little clues to how life might be when, for instance, we get to sleep through the night and past 4 am, or when both boys don't require near constant attention. Even today I glimpsed this hopefully-not-too-distant-future when Cedric was happily sitting and exploring board books while I watched him from the kitchen and made lunch while Dashiell played nearly independently and Chris attended to laundry. Everyone was engaged in an activity of their choosing, no... Read more →

New paint! New paint! Love is not a strong enough word for how I feel about the new colors in our house. It's made me look at our house with new eyes. The space feels brighter, bigger and more cohesive. I love it. Have I said that already? It took until Sunday to get the house back to normal and to really see the change. I felt so energized that even though I should have gone to bed early I stayed up to make sure all the dishes were washed so the kitchen would be perfect. An added, unexpected bonus... Read more →

Hey, July! So far the summer isn't terrible. It's hot, for sure, but there's also iced coffee and grilled pizza (here's how we make ours). I'm excited for the long weekend coming up, which I'm stretching by taking Thursday off as well. And my parents are flying in today! Tomorrow the boys will be at daycare and I'm taking the day off so I'm looking forward to uninterrupted conversation and maybe tackling a couple of small projects with my parents. We're going to a big potluck and pool party on the 4th of July and the holiday is starting to... Read more →